


Love Like the Melvaran Mud Flea Vaccine

by Jaylee



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-27
Updated: 2011-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaylee/pseuds/Jaylee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Jim met Spock he wanted to kill him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Like the Melvaran Mud Flea Vaccine

*****

 

The first time Jim met Spock he wanted to kill him.

Had visions for hours afterwards of pushing Spock out of an airlock, of feeding him a salad of poinsettia leaves (what?! He’d heard somewhere that Vulcans thought flower petals a delicacy or something… offing him that way would be somewhat humanitarian), of hacking into the Kobayashi Maru simulation again, only to make Spock the computer generated version of a Klingon captain just so Jim can give the order to blow him up.

He relayed each fantasy to Bones, in full glorious detail, as the good Doctor was sneaking him aboard the _Enterprise_.

In retrospect he probably should have left out the one about the poinsettias, it probably made him sound a bit loony.

Bones just shook his head, gave him that exasperated look that the man should have patented. The one that said _‘Good God Almighty, why me? What form of evil did I commit in a past life to be saddled with the Wicked Witch of the West for an ex-wife and a psycho as a best friend? Poinsettias Jim? Really? You need to get more creative than that, kid. Here, read this chapter on toxins from this medical journal I wrote in my spare time in between treating the boo-boos of idiots and rescuing kittens from tall trees.’_

… Bones wanted everyone to think he was a cranky, ol’ bear when in reality Jim secretly suspected that while _he_ was daydreaming of offing Spock in new and imaginative ways, _Bones_ was thinking of ways to revive the hobgoblin, even from Death By Poisonous Christmas Flower.

That Hippocratic oath thing was such a nuisance.

“Do you think Vulcans are susceptible to rattle snake venom?” he asked in the midst of his allergic reaction to the Melvaran Mud Flea virus vaccine, only, since his tongue was rather numb, it came out sounding something more along the lines of, “Do ewe pink Tolkens are perceptible to addle cake serum?”

Which would probably explain why Bones didn’t bother answering or even mustering up an exasperated expression for that one.

Disappointing really, it was his most imaginative plot of killing Spock yet, if he did say so himself.

It wasn’t until his allergic reaction to the cortisone, which was meant to curtail his allergic reaction to the histamine blocker, which was meant to curtail his allergic reaction to the Melvaran Mud Flea vaccine that it dawned on him that he’d literally spent _hours_ focusing on planning Spock’s demise.

He’d never reacted that strongly to anyone before in his life. Hell, he’d never tried to think of ways to kill anybody before either (obviously, even he had to admit that yes, the poinsettia idea was rather amateurish as clever assassination plots go).

Spock had the power to get under his skin but good.

It was an unnerving realization.

 

*****

 

Public displays of affection made Jim uncomfortable.

He had once tried to blame his mother for that. After all, she was always off engineering things for Starfleet, and had left he and Sam with the proverbial wicked stepfather like some form of over-the-top Hans Christian Anderson cliché; a stepfather who, needless to say, did not believe in hugs or even fatherly pats on the back as a means of comforting his young charges.

Despite her horrid taste in men, if her second (and third, and forth and fifth… no wait, the fifth one was actually tolerable) choice was any indication, Jim adored his mother to pieces. Winona Kirk was a force of nature, strong and smart and unyielding. Jim liked that in a person, so he wasn’t all that surprised when she had looked at him with a raised eyebrow, muttering under her breath, “I wouldn’t blame me; I’d blame your Y chromosome.”

Jim thought that if his mother had been born three hundred years earlier than she had she would have burned bras, did LDS, and sung folk music about wars being evil and leaving on jet planes.

And people _wondered_ why Jim turned out the way he did?

But the point was, with a thoroughly repressed childhood and all that, Jim just wasn’t the hugging type.

Yet when Jim saw Spock’s face upon returning from Vulcan, he had the strongest urge to hug him. To pull the Vulcan’s body to his own and grasp him as tightly as his strength would allow and protect him from all the horrible, shocking, terrible things that were going on around them.

The destruction of a planet, the pointless slaughter of billions and billions of innocent beings: Vulcan men, Vulcan women, little, cute pointy-eared children, and, perhaps most poignantly, Spock’s human mother (if anyone messed with Jim’s mother he’d reign the forces of hell on their ass)… Nero’s actions made Jim more nauseous than poisonous poinsettias could _ever_ accomplish.

He’d make all the evilness of the galaxy go away for Spock during in that moment, if he could.

Which was more than a little confusing, considering that not too long ago he had been plotting Spock’s rather painful demise.

But there was something in those deep, sorrowful brown eyes that called to a touchy feely-side of Jim-T-for-Touché-Kirk that he truly hadn’t known existed before that moment.

What the hell _was_ it about Spock?

He revised his previous opinions on public displays of affection when as he and Spock were heading off to most certainly get themselves slaughtered, sans flowers or snakes, he had to watch Spock and Uhura kiss on the transporter pad.

Weren’t there rules about fraternizing while on duty? The hell, man? So not appropriate behavior.

His justifiable outrage nearly masked the sharp pain in his chest, the one that he refused to call jealousy because James T. Kirk did not _do_ jealousy. And really, what reason would he have to be jealous?

What did he care if Spock’s attention was on Uhura and not on him during what could be their last few moments of life? That he didn’t so much as get a ‘well, it’s certainly been _something_ serving with you during this hell we’ve just lived through’ speech.

If, by some miracle, he and Spock did live to see the end of this day, and Jim survived his conduct hearing with his career intact and maybe saw a promotion to Captain one day – for real and not just a field promotion – he was totally banning the practice of kissing on transporter pads, as punishable by dousing the offenders with a tub of cold water.

 

*****

 

Jim really didn’t scare easily.

His mother claimed it was because he had a death wish. His brother, Sam, said it was because Jim had been dropped on his head as an infant. Jim was certain it had more to do with his manly prowess.

But the first time he stepped onto the bridge of his ship as Captain, and Captain for real this time, not just because he’d been forced to bully Spock into it, he could admit to himself that he was scared to death.

He hadn’t even been this scared when he’d boarded the _Narada_ with little more than Spock and a phaser, and it was a whole ship full of lackeys who blindly followed the batshit insane orders of a _‘particularly troubled Romulan.’_

What that said about him, that he was more frightened of messing up as captain than he was of a ship full of mass murdering fuckheads, he didn’t want to know.

The things was, not months ago, the people serving under him had been his freakin’ classmates. And it that was daunting _enough_ , he’d done a four year program in three, and had had very little hands-on training. Other captains had _years_ to prepare for this pressure; he’d had a tête à tête with an insane sociopath.

For some odd reason, he didn’t think that really equated, experience-wise. Suddenly that crack he made to Pike about going through the system faster didn’t seem so clever.

Yet he wanted this so, _so_ badly. He wanted this ship, he wanted to serve with these people – a crew he already knew to be exceptional beyond the telling of it – he wanted to be what Nero had claimed that other Jim Kirk from that other universe had been… a great man. One for the history books.

Hell, if he couldn’t achieve _that_ level of greatness, he’d settle for simply being the best Captain Starfleet had ever seen.

He just didn’t know quite how to do that yet.

And his crew, his bright, young, promising crew… their lives could very well come to depend on his decisions from here on out. Nothing like a healthy bit of pressure to start the day, it was a more effective stimulant that caffeine ever had the hope of being.

God, but he needed a paper bag to breathe into.

Screw that, he needed to remember _how_ to breathe first.

And then Spock waltzed aboard the bridge and inquired about the position of First Officer, even making a crack about citing references, and Jim had never been so glad to see anybody in his entire life.

Spock had experience. Spock was the smartest person Jim knew. Spock would not let Jim screw up too badly.

The gratitude Jim felt towards Spock right then eclipsed every intense emotion Spock had elicited within him to date.

 

*****

 

Being in love felt kind of like a dose of the Melvaran Mud Flea vaccine in the sense that sometimes his tongue felt numb, and other times he felt a bit feverish.

The thing was that there were a thousand logical reasons why Spock should be off limits to him. They were Captain and First Officer; they had rules of conduct to uphold. They were friends (one of his mother’s most poignant pearls of wisdom had been to tell Jim that the quickest way to destroy a friendship was through sex) and, most importantly, Jim valued Spock’s presence in his life too much to risk a romantic relationship when his past attempts at it hadn’t exactly turned out so stellar.

In fact, Jim had it on good authority (i.e. Carol Marcus, Janice Lester, Gary Mitchell, Ruth-what-was-her-last-name-again?, etc, etc), that he rather sucked at it.

He wouldn’t do that to Spock.

Beyond being in love with him, he genuinely _liked_ Spock, thought his First to be utterly fantastic, which was the most important reason Jim had to stay away.

Spock, even a year later, was still mourning his mother and his planet, still struggling with the two cultures that combined made his DNA, yet warred with each other so spectacularly. Moreover, he and Uhura had never resumed their romantic relationship once their mission had began so it was pretty safe to presume that Spock wasn’t exactly looking for romantic overtures at this point in time.

And who could blame him?

True, Spock made Jim crazy. Made him homicidal one moment and overwhelmingly affectionate the next. But he also made Jim feel invincible, as if he could accomplish anything, even laugh in the face of death, with Spock at his side.

It was the most amazing feeling.

The year they’d served together so far had been the best year of Jim’s life. Maybe he was being a bit saccharinely optimist, here, but he really, _really_ looked forward to the next four (and hoped, at the end of this mission, he could talk Spock into yet another five).

So yes, Spock was strictly hands-off. A friend, nothing more. Jim needed these self-reminders every once in a while to keep his head on straight, especially when the constant yearning got to be overwhelming.

Like waking up in sickbay after a disastrous away mission on a Class M planet that was thought to be stable but was actually experiencing some rather moving seismic activity to find Spock sitting at his bedside. The ghost throbbing of one previously broken leg, a few cracked ribs and some bruises had nothing on the throbbing of Jim’s heart at the realization that Spock had been by his side through the bone regeneration, the administering of pain killers and the traditional post-away mission sickbay recovery snooze.

“You didn’t have to Spock,” Jim began, but before he could finish Spock gave him a look that clearly said, _‘Maybe I did not have to, but I certainly wanted to and I am distinctly unimpressed by any statement contradicting my freewill so readily. We have had this discussion before, Jim.’_

Jim held up his hands, palms facing out in surrender, a smile spreading across his face. “Okay, okay, I won’t finish that sentence.”

“I am most gratified,” Spock returned with a nod, eyes lighting with mirth, the edge of his lips curling ever-so-slightly in the approximation of a smile.

Gazing at him then, looking so amazing, and so adamantly insisting that he belonged by Jim’s side, Jim loved Spock so much he thought he might pass out.

Jim had to look the other direction before his own gaze gave everything away.

“Jim,” he heard, in that tone Spock used when he thought Jim was being particularly ridiculous. “How long are you going to deny us?”

It was a testament to how close he and Spock had become that Spock’s question didn’t need to be clarified, the meaning as thick and heavy as molasses, though Jim could scarcely allow himself to believe that it had been voiced.

And then, when it did sink in, Jim was burning, his body heated and excited in a way far more potent than any vaccine side-effect could ever hope to achieve. He turned back slowly, once again finding himself experiencing fear in the dawn of unfamiliar territory.

But, like that fateful day on the bridge all those months ago, meeting Spock’s gaze eased those fears.

He wanted to say something clever, something extraordinary, something heartfelt, and lovely and poetic… instead he said, before he could stop himself, “Spock, the stress I’ve experienced holding myself back from propositioning you… you’re going to be the death of me yet.”

Spock leaned in closer to Jim, his face just a breath away as amusement shown brightly from his countenance.

“There was a time, when we first met, that I allowed myself a few fanciful moments where I envisioned your death by my hands,” Spock admitted.

Jim couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped despite his best efforts to reign it in, or the gasp that followed when the look on Spock’s face contorted to an expression that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than love.

“I find myself no longer wishing for your demise, quite the opposite in fact,” Spock breathed, inching closer.

“Well, that’s a good thing. Killing each other would be a terrible way to maintain a relationship,“ Jim teased, because by the end of the day, he was a wiseass, thoroughly smitten and entirely twitterpated or not.

His last thought, before Spock’s lips met his, was that it was a good thing Spock liked him that way.

Later, Jim would revise his decree as Captain of the _Enterprise_. Kissing on the transporter pad was still a no-no, but kissing in sickbay was entirely acceptable.


End file.
